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"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Things we have learned from 5 weeks of football...

- The B1G sucks this year and is a clear level beneath the SEC, Big 12 and PAC 12... but still above the MAC.

- There is no "clear cut" set of school who should be considered Elite top 10. We have an Elite 3-4... but after that it is a hot mess that seems to be shifting around more this year then I remember is years past.

Definitely. As will some teams simply improving as they get through the Big 10 season. Last year's two BCS teams were pretty good - that Oregon victory was by the skin of their teeth, as was UM's over VT. The problem has been with the depth of the conference, but teams like NW, Wiscy, and PSU are frankly playing better than I had imagined, and even Minny looks like a dangerous squad. Sure, Nebraska looks overrated but it is all about matchups.

I'm not disagreeing the conference is down, but I'm also not sold that the #3 team in the Big 10 (which looks like MSU, UM, or Wiscy) wouldn't be able to handle the #3 in the SEC (which is what, Florida or Georgia) in a bowl game. Also, after USC and Oregon nobody in the Pac-12 scares me.

The Big 10 lacks the dominant teams at the top and that's why it looks so down; I do think the conference will play reasonably well this year.

Right now it's Georgia who also happens to be ranked #5 in the country. Considering MSU and UGA played an OT game last year and one team is better (Georgia) and one is worse (MSU) who do you like in that game?

The SEC may be top-heavy, but it's real heavy at the top with 5 teams in the top 10.

I agree on the lack of elite teams. Just look at the folks in the top ten right now. ND may have the worst offense of any top-ten ranked team in history, Stanford lost to WSU, and a number of others have struggled with unranked opposition. Really Alabama and Oregon are the only teams that have really shined to me. LSU is right up there, but has struggled a great deal on more than one occasion. Just an off year for football overall.

Don't get it twisted. No one recognizes defense anymore. The Big12 and Pac12 don't play any. For a while there I was letting the media storyline about how the B1G is down and never coming back get to me, but no more. I agree that we will bounce back this season.

LSU is pretty meh, too. They let an FCS hang around with them today, and barely beat Auburn. I think Oregon will run the table in the PAC 12 and make the title game, but Saban will somehow craft a masterful game plan and completely shut down their offense. I swear that man has sold his soul for the amount of success he's had.

Alabama is, in my opinion, the only real elite team in the country. That's a junior NFL team.

Attention campers. Lunch is cancelled due to lack of hustle. Deal with it.

At the top
• Mich loses to ND
• MSU loses to ND
• Nebraska loses to UCLA
• Wiscy loses to OrSt (Wiscy soon to fall to the middlings)
• Ohio escapes against Cal at home

Middling teams w/ a shot at their divisions due to weakness
• Purdue loses to ND
• Northwestern held serve and is 5-0.
Unthinkable at the beginning of the season,
but now it's not out of the realm of possibility
that a 40ish NW could squeak by Mich, MSU, & Neb clubs
that haven't looked particularly Top 25 worthy.

In the lower middle class
• Iowa loses to Iowa State and Central Mich
• PSU loses to Ohio-Athens
(OK, they could rebound & join the middlings)
• Minnesota also held serve at 4-0 OOC,
but they've already been exposed by Iowa,
and are soon to join the bottom-dwellers

After watching the *best* teams play from each conference, it is clear that there is one clear best conference this season, the SEC only because they have Bama and LSU. All of the other teams are quite flawed and haven't faced challenging competition. The PAC 12 got lucky this year in that all of their wins over BCS does tended to be at home while last season they played a lot of those games away (Asu, Ucla, etc).

Honestly the Big 10 might be the 3rd best /deepest conference but all teams are middling. The PAC 12 would be a close 4th, Acc 5th, and the Big 12 is the clear second.

Nothing about the Big 12 impressed my today. When teams are dropping 60+ points on each other, that's not a good sign. Honestly, if Baylor had picked off one pass or caused one turnoever against WVU, they would have won. I hated hearing people on Gameday talking up the offensive firepower they were seeing in the Big 12 while knocking teams playing defense like MSU and OSU. I'm not saying yesterday's game was magic, but watching WVU and Baylor play was equally offensive if you like to see teams at least try to stop each other.

I thought so too. To the pollsters it doesn't matter at all who you play, or how bad your defense is. You can play the weakest of cupcake schedules, put up 80 points a game and you stand out. It doesn't even matter if those cupcakes put up 73 points on you, so long as you put up 80. There is nothing to be gained for your season by playing good teams OOC. Maybe there's something to be gained from "exposure," the ADs bottom line, or some other intangible, hypothetical reason, but all of those are easily eclipsed by the benefits of going undefeated against 12 crappy schools. It gives you almost zero benefit for your season to play a tough schedule. Look at Boise. They've played absolutely nobody for the last 5 years and were consistantly ranked in the top 10. Even in the future with SOS being figured into the playoff formula it'll be a relatively useless stat because it'll likely only be used as a tiebreaker stat for the last few 2-3 loss teams to get in. If we win the B1G then we'll get in automatically and it wont matter if we played Alabama or Eastern to start the season.

I doubt we will see Denard turn the ball over again like he did against ND. All quarterbacks have really bad games once in a while. Hell, Peyton Manning threw three picks in one quarter a couple weeks ago.

that the reason the Big Ten had the lowest ranked teams, or was considered a second tier conference, was because the league had the most parity. For example Northwestern, widely considered to be in the bottom third of the conference historically speaking, could beat any team any given week, whereas the bottom third of the SEC could never upset their best teams. Now I think we just suck....

"Only three things can happen when you pass, and two of them are bad" -Bo Schembechler

I too had a similar conclusion on the basis that the Big 10 had more depth than most conferences. Also, for years I have been debating the quality of our conference. This year, though, I am just embarrassed...

Arizona puts up 35 points and 545 yards on Oregon State, in their 4th game under RR. (Arizona was 4-8 last year.) Wisconsin put up 7 points and 207 yards on Oregon State this year. And we're moving to that MANBALL, Wisconsin, 1990s UCLA offense with Borges, right? (Not the 2002-2003 Borges Indiana offense, or the 2005-07 Borges Auburn offense, etc., etc.) Watching the good offensive teams today, did any West Coast offenses stand out to you?

Remember Stanford last year? They were pretty damn good on offense...must have been the spread, eh? Oh wait.

And as the poster above said, Bama put 41 on us.

Wisconsin's offense sucks because Wisconsin's offense sucks...not because of their scheme. Remember RR in year one here? Can we conclude from that that his offensive system sucks too? It's all about having the right personnel to run what you run best...Wisky is struggling because they're weak at QB and not as good up front as they were a year ago.

At some point, maybe we have to acknowledge that it's not the DC that's the problem. Shafer, Robinson, Casteel - that's three DCs in the past four seasons he's had, and all have fielded terrible defenses. And all three guys have pretty good career résumés. Maybe the fault actually lies with their boss (and perhaps, the position coaches he keeps hiring over and over).

If Rich Rod wants to be a championship coach, he's going to have to swallow his pride and recognize that he doesn't know how to handle the defensive side of the ball. He needs to leave his DC alone in all areas, including hiring of position coaches. I'm not sure if he is capable of accepting this.

Stanford won a BCS bowl last year with an offense similar to the one Borges will run. Alabama seems fine running a classic pro style offense.

Any offense will work in college with the right personnel and schemes - hell, Air Force can put up 30 points on virtually anyone and they run an offense that high school teams think is archaic. Yes, WVU dropped a bunch of points on Baylor - they also gave up 63 and its not like Baylor has ever fielded anything approximating a defense. And sure, Oregon State shut down Wisconsin, but they still only won by 3 points (And scored 10 themselves) with that crazy spread offense they run. Teams win and lose based on have a defined scheme and following it. RR is running his offense at Arizona and it works fine; on defense, Casteel is still installing his plays and it will take some time.

I think Georgia has the players to compete with Alabama in the SEC. UGA has as good a defense as LSU and a better offense.

Aaron Murray is the best quarterback in the SEC, UGA has 4 WRs who are very dependable, and 2 Freshmen RBs in Todd Gurley and Keith Marshall who each seem to get 100 yards per game.

On Defense, tonight was their first game at full strength with their All-American Safety and their starting middle linebacker returning from suspensions (plus, a saftey whose name is "Rambo" should be able to compete with the likes of Nick Saban). Tonight they were still ironing things out and many of the points Tennessee scored were off of turnovers and fantastic field position.

I very much agree with this sentiment, at least as far as anyone can really "compete" with Alabama. I do not think LSU is anywhere near as talented right now as people are giving them credit for (many more deficiences on offense than defense). Georgia has a lot of skill and Aaron Murray is showing great development as a QB. If they can forego the almost-FSU-like guaranteed one game "Derp", I think they will be seeing Alabama in the SEC championship game. According to Lou Holtz, however, South Carolina is going to beat Alabama . . . so I guess we'll just see about that that one.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.